Business Ethics Essay example

Submitted By alpx5
Words: 1042
Pages: 5

Austin Pachan
Business Ethics
As the Human Resources manager of this athletic clothing company, my job is to formulate an ethical strategy that will help repair my company’s damaged reputation. Their damaged reputation came after my company started outsourcing American jobs to developing countries. The protesters are against globalization and have reached out to major media outlets to let people know that the company is running sweatshops. The acquisitions are that the company is exploiting the poor workers by paying low wages, exposing them to dangerous conditions, and employing young children. After my visits to five factories I found that most of the protesters acquisitions are not all accurate. As the Human Resource manager I will provide the business owner with a new mission statement that incorporates a new business plan that will strengthen the company's reputation.
Before building a mission statement it is important to examine the ethical issues brought up by the protesters. By using the Natural Law theory of ethics the company will develop and put into practice new morals that will help the company. The Natural law theory of ethics consist of four levels of revealed laws known as human law, natural law, divine law, and eternal Law. Using these four laws will help the company reach the highest goal of creating a company that is consistent with God's original design. The first step to this is to determine how to eliminate the conflicts and then come up with the highest purpose the company could achieve. Bringing together the first three laws mentioned and developing a plan that allows the company to do the most good do this.
The first issue that the protesters brought up was globalization. Their issue with this topic was the outsourcing of American jobs causes less job opportunities in America. This is not an ethical issue in my eyes as long as it is done out of good moral virtues like generosity where the company wants to help others, and be trustworthy. In Philippians 2:4 it states, “Let each of you look not only to his or own interest, but also to interest of others.” By understanding that globalization has the ability solve some of the world’s biggest problems in unemployment and poverty it is important to outsource when looking out for others. A company wanting to help a developing country is ethical; however, exploiting the cheap labor is unethical. So by outsourcing jobs you are not necessarily taking away jobs but giving them to another country whose human law has fewer requirement. The abundance of human laws in the U.S makes the price of clothing too expensive to be competitive in the market. There are multiple human laws that put the U.S. at a disadvantage in that job market. An example of this the wage rate, is found in the case study and it mentions that the foreign workers gets paid thirty-three dollars for fifty-five hour week. A U.S worker with the same job would be getting seventeen dollars and hour. That is $935 a week for a U.S. worker, equivalent to pay of twenty-eight foreign workers. Another issue the protesters brought up that I believe to be ethical is the wages of the workers. The wage rate of thirty- three dollars a week is in compliance with the minimum scale of that area. This is like working at McDonalds in the U.S for minimum wage that is set in the human law. The last thing that I will defend is the age requirement of worker. The case also says that child labor is exploited, but in these countries it perfectly legal for kids that age to work. Just because it is not accepted in the U.S. for kids that age to bear the burden of jobs, does not mean it is not accepted in other cultures. It is difficult for me to see anything unethical about young teens helping their family in need.
The unethical issue that the protesters accuse the company rightly of is that of the poor working conditions and having